In Two Places
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: Months after Javier hangs up and destroys his phone, Letty gets another call.


_**A/N** : This story proceeds as if Javier's goodbye call to Letty at the end of 1x09 was their last contact. Enjoy!_

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It is two-fifteen AM when her phone goes off but she is already wide awake even before she hears it ring. She doesn't know how he got her number; she doesn't ask. It is enough simply to hear him breathe on the other end of the line, to hear him whisper _Letty?_ when she picks up, as if he's uncertain he reached the right recipient.

"It's me," she says, and his answering sigh of relief is audible. She would give off one of her own—it is so good to know he's alive—but she isn't sure if he's actually safe. She isn't sure of anything, not since that one-sided goodbye, not since she sold his name to the Bureau like the traitor she is.

"Are you okay?"

They ask the question at the same time, and then stumble through simultaneous answers. After a jolting bit of back-and-forth, their individual securities are confirmed: he's okay; she's okay. He doesn't mention the Bureau, and she's too scared to ask. If he somehow doesn't yet know what she's done, she doesn't want to be the one to tell him. She hopes she can go to her grave without having to tell him.

"Are you still in the country?" she asks.

He makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat that reveals nothing. She doesn't push him. She knows he could hang up any second, and she will do anything to keep him on the line. Anything to find him again, to see him again, to be with him again.

"You're at your mom's?"

"Yes," she answers. She lies back down on the bed in her childhood room. She'd sat bolt upright when she'd heard his voice, but now she settles again. She curls onto her side, a pillow tucked beneath her head, trying not to remember the last time they shared this bed. Trying not to think of the note he left her, now hidden away in one of the false bottoms of her desk drawer with the too-few other things that remind her of him.

"You're doing okay out there, Letty? You sober?"

"Yes," she answers, but instead of feeling pride in speaking honestly, all she can feel is pain at the truth.

It had been hard after he left. Awful. A hundred times she thought about lighting up, shooting up; a thousand times, she thought about going after Rob's bourbon or her mother's vodka. Thinking about Jacob had stopped her most times. She had her son with her: someone who depended on her, someone she was meant to look after. And when thoughts of Jacob hadn't worked—when she had been in her darkest spirals, and knew in her heart that Jacob would have a good home with or without her—she had thought of Javier. Of how disappointed he would be, if he ever came back and found her strung-out, wasted out of her mind. Of how angry he would be. Of how he would take one look at her and then put his back to her. He would disappear and never come back, she knew that for a fact.

And she couldn't risk that. So she stayed sober, for all the selfish reasons and all the not-so-selfish reasons.

"How's Jacob?"

Letty closes her eyes, curling tighter into herself. _Fine,_ she wants to say. _Good,_ she wants to say. _Happy,_ she is proud to say.

But all that comes out is, "He still asks about you."

It's true. In the four months since Javier disappeared into the night without a trace, not more than two weeks have passed in succession without Jacob asking after him. The first few times, he asked her directly, but when he noticed the toll it took on her to try and come up with answers, he stopped. Instead, he now asks his grandmother. He asks his grandfather. Rob and Jacob talk about him a lot, Letty knows. When they have solemn discussions over cartoons after dinner, she sits silent on the top of the stairs and eavesdrops. Rob always says such nice things about Javier.

"What does Jacob ask about me?"

"He asks if you're coming home. He asks why you left. Why you never said goodbye." She sucks in a breath, decides it's pointless to hide, and then she whispers, "I ask those things too, you know. All the time, I ask those things. But you're never here to answer."

"I said goodbye to you, Letty."

"That wasn't a goodbye," she replies at once, hypocritical fury rising in her at the exhaustion in his voice. What does he have to be exhausted about? What right does he have to feel anything, with the way he left things? "That was no goodbye and you know it. That was abandonment; do not pretend otherwise."

"It—" He falters for one of the few times she's ever witnessed. "It's what I could manage at the time," he finishes finally. He sounds very tired.

"And now?" she shoots back, refusing to let this phone call to end like that one, refusing to let him slink off into the night once again. "What can you manage now?"

 _What is this now?_ she almost asks, but she holds herself back. She doesn't want him to think too hard about this call. She doesn't want him to regret it.

She is so tired of regrets. So sick of them. So sick of everything, everything except him.

She uncurls out of her fetal position, and lies flat on her back. She holds the phone to her right ear and looks up at the ceiling. There are still a few of those glow-in-the-dark stars pasted up there from her youth, and they glow a pale, sickly green in the dark of the night. The house is quiet around her. She can just barely hear Rob snoring down the hall.

She turns her gaze to the closed door and stares, remembering that rainy evening so many months ago now when Javier had shown up in the middle of the night without a word: no sorry, no explanation, no nothing. She remembers the shape of him, standing in that doorway, staring at her. She remembers the feel of him, wrapped so close and warm and secure around her when he joined her in bed. She remembers thinking, very distinctly: _He came home_. She remembers falling asleep thinking he would always stay.

 _I need you,_ he had told her that night, and she had believed him. She had trusted that his need was the same as hers: deep and abiding and unchangeable.

These last few months, of course, have proven otherwise. But now, with this call…

She doesn't know what this call means. She doesn't know where they're supposed to go from here. All she knows is that she is too scared to think straight, and if she makes one wrong move, he could hang up tonight like he hung up that night so long ago, and she will have no hope of ever reaching him again. She can't think, she can't plan, she can't read his mind and know the right things to say to keep him here, so instead she pushes all of those unknowns aside, and she does the one thing that has always come most naturally to them.

"You know I don't like when you go on these long business trips," she whispers into the phone. "Remind me again when you're coming home? I lost the itinerary."

"Letty…" His sigh is heavy, slow. She can picture his face: eyes closed, brow furrowed, pain crumpling his features. He doesn't want this; she can hear it in his voice. But she knows no other way to keep him on the line, no other way to keep him close. No other way to remind him what it is he is missing—and what he can still have.

"Two weeks is a long time," she reminds him. "Don't act like it isn't. The house gets lonely without you here. It's too big with just me in it. I told you this last time, remember?"

He is silent on the other side of the line for what feels like a very, very long time. She is about to give up, to confess, to beg forgiveness, when—

"What about the kids?"

Her throat lurches so painfully that she physically can't speak for a moment. He covers the silence when she can't.

"I thought they were at the house with you? Or—are they at Nana's for the weekend?" he offers. His voice is strained, just a bit—he's scared he's gone too far, and shuts her eyes, feeling the world spinning a bit around her. What she wouldn't do for a drink right now…

"Nana's," Letty hears herself whisper. "That's where they are. Just for the weekend."

"All of them?"

" _Both_ of them," she corrects pointedly, not wanting this fantasy to get out of control. In response, she can hear that soft exhale he gives off sometimes when he smiles.

"Both, yes, of course," he agrees, acquiescing to that detail easily. When she closes her eyes, she can picture his smile, the deferential nod of his head as he takes her cue. "So if they're gone, then that means you're at home…"

"All alone," she finishes for him. She closes her eyes, lifting her free hand to her stomach. She lets it rest there, over her t-shirt.

"All alone," he murmurs. "Funny, I'm all alone too."

He doesn't say anything else, leaving it there, and for a minute, she listens to him breathe on the other side of the phone without speaking. For once, Letty doesn't feel the urge to cross that line they've already crossed so many times. Something has cooled the usually combustible heat between them, and she can't find it in herself to start a spark. She doesn't know if it's her own guilt that's stopping her, or the late hour, or the long separation and all the things left unsaid. All she knows is, she would be perfectly content to do nothing more than lie here until morning, listening to him breathe on the other side of the phone.

The neon numbers on her bedside clock have just turned to 2:40 when he clears his throat. They have been sitting here in complete silence, apart but together, for at least fifteen minutes.

"Well, I should let you get back to sleep," he tries to excuse, but she shakes her head, interrupting him before he's even finished.

"Don't," she tells him. "Don't go. Don't leave me again."

"Letty—"

"You don't have to say anything," she whispers. "You don't have to explain yourself. I won't ask any questions. Just… stay on the phone with me for a while. Please."

He says nothing, but she chalks it up to a victory anyway. She pulls one of the blankets closer, over her shoulder, and curls up onto her side again, as if she is settling in bed beside him, and not alone. She can still remember the last time they had sex, here in this bed. It seems like so long ago now, and yet when she closes her eyes, she can still recall what it felt like, to have his lips on her neck, his body pressed hard against hers. She can remember how at peace she had felt, lying in this bed with him afterwards, the two of them talking, really talking for once, with nothing hidden between them anymore.

She doesn't know how they went from that to this. She doesn't know how they get back.

"I miss you," she whispers after a minute, unable to keep the truth inside her anymore. "Javier, I miss you so much."

"Letty…" That sigh again, longer this time. He is exhausted now—but from life, or from her?

"Do you miss me at all?" She sounds pathetic, she knows, begging for attention from him the way she used to from Sean, from so many others, but she can't help herself. When she digs herself into holes, this is how she gets herself out. _Don't you miss me? Don't you want me? Don't you need me?_

"Of course," he replies. "Of course I—"

"They why aren't you here?" she demands. "Why did you leave? Why did you—" She swallows hard to keep the worst of it down, but the worst escapes anyway: "Why did you make me feel like I mattered to you and then turn your back on me? What was the point of—of anything?"

"I could ask you those same questions."

She blinks at his cold answer, frowning at the sudden freeze in his voice. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

She sits up in bed, drawing her knees to her chest, wondering where in the world this anger is coming from. She wonders if he knows she turned him in—but how could he, if he's still out there somewhere, alive and free? And if he doesn't know about that betrayal, what reason does he have to act like this with her?

He is the one who abandoned her. He is the one who played at being a father and then ran off, just like all the others. He is the one in the wrong.

She needs to remember that, and he does too.

"I did everything you asked," she snarls. "Do you ever think about that? I did _everything_. I went along with you on all those jobs, doing your dirty work, making connections for you, being your shield of normalcy. I stayed sober. I stopped using. I tried to be normal—"

He interrupts her with what almost sounds like a laugh.

"You're not normal, Letty. You're never going to be normal."

She's heard those words a thousand times before. From her school counselors, from her so-called friends, from her own mother. She has armored herself against such words over the years, but it is different hearing them come from his lips. She has no armor when it comes to him. No power. No ability to walk away.

And everything to lose.

She sucks in a breath, hating how sharp, how tear-filled it sounds. She can feel the sobs coming, starting deep in her throat and burning beneath her eyelids. She needs to hang up before he hears them.

"Well—thanks for that," she whispers, keeping her voice low to hide how hoarse it is already. "And go fuck yourself."

"Yes, I imagine I'll have to, since you won't be doing that particular favor for me anymore, will you?"

She had been about to hang up, to abandon him on the other end of the line like he'd abandoned her, but his quick retort makes her stop. It makes her think.

It makes her heart pound in her chest with a fear her mind can't yet face.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what it means," he replies. And then, before she can press him further, he continues bleakly, "But it doesn't even matter. It doesn't fucking matter, because I still want you anyway. I still think about you anyway. I still call you in the middle of the goddamn night _anyway_. You fuck me over for that piece of shit and still— _still_ —I'll do anything for you."

"What—" She tries to speak over the pounding of her heart but it is nearly impossible. _How does he know?_ Her mind is frantic with questions and fear and confusion. She has to take a breath, two, before she can manage a coherent question: "What are you talking about, Javier?"

He lingers just long enough on the other end of the call to make her think he might actually answer. They might actually talk about this. They might, somehow, find a way to scrape back to that mad, happy little life they'd had together.

But then the line goes dead.

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 _ **A/N** : Thank you for reading! Please leave a review if you have thoughts. :)_


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